My Novel Part 7

The question was fairly fought out by their respective dependants, and followed by various actions for a.s.sault and trespa.s.s. As the legal question of right was extremely obscure, it never had been properly decided; and, indeed, neither party wished it to be decided, each at heart having some doubt of the propriety of its own claim. A marriage between a younger son of the Hazeldeans and a younger daughter of the Sticktorights was viewed with equal indignation by both families; and the consequence had been that the runaway couple, unblessed and unforgiven, had scrambled through life as they could, upon the scanty pay of the husband, who was in a marching regiment, and the interest of L1000, which was the wife's fortune independent of her parents. They died and left an only daughter (upon whom the maternal L1000 had been settled), about the time that the squire came of age and into possession of his estates. And though he inherited all the ancestral hostility towards the Sticktorights, it was not in his nature to be unkind to a poor orphan, who was, after all, the child of a Hazeldean. Therefore he had educated and fostered Jemima with as much tenderness as if she had been his sister; put out her L1000 at nurse, and devoted, from the ready money which had accrued from the rents during his minority, as much as made her fortune (with her own acc.u.mulated at compound interest) no less than L4000, the ordinary marriage portion of the daughters of Hazeldean.

On her coming of age, he transferred this sum to her absolute disposal, in order that she might feel herself independent, see a little more of the world than she could at Hazeldean, have candidates to choose from if she deigned to marry; or enough to live upon, if she chose to remain single. Miss Jemima had somewhat availed herself of this liberty, by occasional visits to Cheltenham and other watering-places. But her grateful affection to the squire was such that she could never bear to be long away from the Hall. And this was the more praise to her heart, inasmuch as she was far from taking kindly to the prospect of being an old maid; and there were so few bachelors in the neighbourhood of Hazeldean, that she could not but have that prospect before her eyes whenever she looked out of the Hall windows. Miss Jemima was indeed one of the most kindly and affectionate of beings feminine; and if she disliked the thought of single blessedness, it really was from those innocent and womanly instincts towards the tender charities of hearth and home, without which a lady, however otherwise estimable, is little better than a Minerva in bronze. But, whether or not, despite her fortune and her face, which last, though not strictly handsome, was pleasing, and would have been positively pretty if she had laughed more often (for when she laughed, there appeared three charming dimples, invisible when she was grave),--whether or not, I say, it was the fault of our insensibility or her own fastidiousness, Miss Jemima approached her thirtieth year, and was still Miss Jemima. Now, therefore, that beautifying laugh of hers was very rarely heard, and she had of late become confirmed in two opinions, not at all conducive to laughter. One was a conviction of the general and progressive wickedness of the male s.e.x, and the other was a decided and lugubrious belief that the world was coming to an end. Miss Jemima was now accompanied by a small canine favourite, true Blenheim, with a snub nose. It was advanced in life, and somewhat obese. It sat on its haunches, with its tongue out of its mouth, except when it snapped at the flies. There was a strong platonic friends.h.i.+p between Miss Jemima and Captain Barnabas Higginbotham; for he, too, was unmarried, and he had the same ill opinion of your s.e.x, my dear madam, that Miss Jemima had of, ours. The captain was a man of a slim and elegant figure; the less said about the face the better, a truth of which the captain himself was sensible, for it was a favourite maxim of his, "that in a man, everything is a slight, gentlemanlike figure." Captain Barnabas did not absolutely deny that the world was coming to an end, only he thought it would last his time.

Quite apart from all the rest, with the nonchalant survey of virgin dandyism, Francis Hazeldean looked over one of the high starched neckcloths which were then the fas.h.i.+on,--a handsome lad, fresh from Eton for the summer holidays, but at that ambiguous age when one disdains the sports of the boy, and has not yet arrived at the resources of the man.

"I should be glad, Frank," said the squire, suddenly turning round to his son, "to see you take a little more interest in duties which, one day or other, you may be called upon to discharge. I can't bear to think that the property should fall into the hands of a fine gentleman, who will let things go to rack and ruin, instead of keeping them up as I do."

And the squire pointed to the stocks.

Master Frank's eye followed the direction of the cane, as well as his cravat would permit; and he said dryly,--

"Yes, sir; but how came the stocks to be so long out of repair?"

"Because one can't see to everything at once," retorted the squire, tartly. "When a man has got eight thousand acres to look after, he must do a bit at a time."

"Yes," said Captain Barnabas. "I know that by experience."

"The deuce you do!" cried the squire, bluntly. "Experience in eight thousand acres!"

"No; in my apartments in the Albany,--No. 3 A. I have had them ten years, and it was only last Christmas that I bought my j.a.pan cat."

"Dear me," said Miss Jemima; "a j.a.pan cat! that must be very curious.

What sort of a creature is it?"

"Don't you know? Bless me, a thing with three legs, and holds toast! I never thought of it, I a.s.sure you, till my friend Cosey said to me one morning when he was breakfasting at my rooms, 'Higginbotham, how is it that you, who like to have things comfortable about you, don't have a cat?' 'Upon my life,' said I, 'one can't think of everything at a time,'--just like you, Squire."

"Pshaw," said Mr. Hazeldean, gruffly, "not at all like me. And I'll thank you another time, Cousin Higginbotham, not to put me out when I'm speaking on matters of importance; poking your cat into my stocks! They look something like now, my stocks, don't they, Harry? I declare that the whole village seems more respectable. It is astonis.h.i.+ng how much a little improvement adds to the--to the--"

"Charm of the landscape," put in Miss Jemina, sentimentally.

The squire neither accepted nor rejected the suggested termination; but leaving his sentence uncompleted, broke suddenly off with--

"And if I had listened to Parson Dale--"

"You would have done a very wise thing," said a voice behind, as the parson presented himself in the rear.

"Wise thing? Why, surely, Mr. Dale," said Mrs. Hazeldean, with spirit, for she always resented the least contradiction to her lord and master--perhaps as an interference with her own special right and prerogative!--"why, surely if it is necessary to have stocks, it is necessary to repair them."

"That's right! go it, Harry!" cried the squire, chuckling, and rubbing his hands as if he had been setting his terrier at the parson: "St--St--at him! Well, Master Dale, what do you say to that?"

"My dear ma'am," said the parson, replying in preference to the lady, "there are many inst.i.tutions in the country which are very old, look very decayed, and don't seem of much use; but I would not pull them down for all that."

"You would reform them, then," said Mrs. Hazeldean, doubtfully, and with a look at her husband, as much as to say, "He is on politics now,--that's your business."

"No, I would not, ma'am," said the parson, stoutly. "What on earth would you do, then?" quoth the squire. "Just let 'em alone," said the parson.

"Master Frank, there's a Latin maxim which was often put in the mouth of Sir Robert Walpole, and which they ought to put into the Eton grammar, 'Quieta non movere.' If things are quiet, let them be quiet! I would not destroy the stocks, because that might seem to the ill-disposed like a license to offend; and I would not repair the stocks, because that puts it into people's heads to get into them."

The squire was a stanch politician of the old school, and he did not like to think that, in repairing the stocks, he had perhaps been conniving at revolutionary principles.

"This constant desire of innovation," said Miss Jemima, suddenly mounting the more funereal of her two favourite hobbies, "is one of the great symptoms of the approaching crash. We are altering and mending and reforming, when in twenty years at the utmost the world itself may be destroyed!" The fair speaker paused, and Captain Barnabas said thoughtfully, "Twenty years!--the insurance officers rarely compute the best life at more than fourteen." He struck his hand on the stocks as he spoke, and added, with his usual consolatory conclusion, "The odds are that it will last our time, Squire."

But whether Captain Barnabas meant the stocks or the world he did not clearly explain, and no one took the trouble to inquire.

"Sir," said Master Frank to his father, with that furtive spirit of quizzing, which he had acquired amongst other polite accomplishments at Eton,--"sir, it is no use now considering whether the stocks should or should not have been repaired. The only question is, whom you will get to put into them."

"True," said the squire, with much gravity.

"Yes, there it is!" said the parson, mournfully. "If you would but learn 'non quieta movere'!"

"Don't spout your Latin at me, Parson," cried the squire, angrily; "I can give you as good as you bring, any day.

"'Propria quae maribus tribuuntur mascula dicas.-- As in praesenti, perfectum format in avi.'

"There," added the squire, turning triumphantly towards his Harry, who looked with great admiration at this unprecedented burst of learning on the part of Mr. Hazeldean,--"there, two can play at that game! And now that we have all seen the stocks, we may as well go home and drink tea.

Will you come up and play a rubber, Dale? No! hang it, man, I've not offended you?--you know my ways."

"That I do, and they are among the things I would not have altered,"

cried the parson, holding out his hand cheerfully. The squire gave it a hearty shake, and Mrs. Hazeldean hastened to do the same.

"Do come; I am afraid we've been very rude: we are sad blunt folks. Do come; that's a dear good man; and of course poor Mrs. Dale too." Mrs.

Hazeldean's favourite epithet for Mrs. Dale was poor, and that for reasons to be explained hereafter.

"I fear my wife has got one of her bad headaches, but I will give her your kind message, and at all events you may depend upon me."

"That's right," said the squire; "in half an hour, eh? How d' ye do, my little man?" as Lenny Fairfield, on his way home from some errand in the village, drew aside and pulled off his hat with both hands. "Stop; you see those stocks, eh? Tell all the bad boys in the parish to take care how they get into them--a sad disgrace--you'll never be in such a quandary?"

"That at least I will answer for," said the parson.

"And I too," added Mrs. Hazeldean, patting the boy's curly head.

"Tell your mother I shall come and have a good chat with her to-morrow evening."

And so the party pa.s.sed on, and Lenny stood still on the road, staring hard at the stocks, which stared back at him from its four great eyes.

Put Lenny did not remain long alone. As soon as the great folks had fairly disappeared, a large number of small folks emerged timorously from the neighbouring cottages, and approached the site of the stocks with much marvel, fear, and curiosity.

In fact, the renovated appearance of this monster a propos de bottes, as one may say--had already excited considerable sensation among the population of Hazeldean. And even as when an unexpected owl makes his appearance in broad daylight all the little birds rise from tree and hedgerow, and cl.u.s.ter round their ominous enemy, so now gathered all the much-excited villagers round the intrusive and portentous phenomenon.

"D' ye know what the diggins the squire did it for, Gaffer Solomons?"

asked one many-childed matron, with a baby in arms, an urchin of three years old clinging fast to her petticoat, and her hand maternally holding back a more adventurous hero of six, who had a great desire to thrust his head into one of the grisly apertures. All eyes turned to a sage old man, the oracle of the village, who, leaning both hands on his crutch, shook his head bodingly.

"Maw be," said Gaffer Solomons, "some of the boys ha' been robbing the orchards."

"Orchards!" cried a big lad, who seemed to think himself personally appealed to; "why, the bud's scarce off the trees yet!"

"No more it ain't," said the dame with many children, and she breathed more freely.

"Maw be," said Gaffer Solomons, "some o' ye has been sitting snares."

"What for?" said a stout, sullen-looking young fellow, whom conscience possibly p.r.i.c.ked to reply,--"what for, when it bean't the season? And if a poor man did find a hear in his pocket i' the haytime, I should like to know if ever a squire in the world would let 'un off with the stocks, eh?"